Moving Pictures

(OOC: I'll forgive you this once, my love! Haha! <3 I don't mind, at all!)

At some point, but goodness only knows when, the younger of the two Augustus’ in the family Rookwood fell asleep against his mother’s breast. His mouth had fallen agog and soft snores were emanating from him as he cuddled into her loose embrace. One hand had snaked around the brass button attached to her cardigan, dragging it around himself in a form of a blanket. In his way, he must have figured that by keeping a hold on her in this manner, she would not rouse him and he would be fit to remain in that state until morning broke. Certainly, his mother had no attention of disturbing him. In fact, the sight of her infant so far off in dreamland made Athena herself wonder after the bed she had made up that afternoon. The change of scenery had worn out one of the twins and, if the yawns were to attest any case, the girls too. Only, it appeared, Archibald would prove the damning figure in his mother’s attempts to preserve the peace. Theodore had packed wine and she’d found that, of all things, first when she’d begun to try and create a semi-familiar space for the children. She had also remembered a few of the books she’d been reading. She most certainly had a plan that included the bottle of wine, the book and Albus’s fireplace. That was a place as fit as any bed to fall asleep in.

From her thoughts, Athena was broken by the sound of her youngest son declaring his enjoyment of his meal. Athena’s eyebrows frowned down into a brief scowl but before she could open her mouth to admonish him – though, by the look Archibald gave her it seemed as though they both knew he wouldn’t be scolded that much – Albus distracted her and Athena took a moment to sober herself, noting the relieved look that Albus was fixed with by the small boy, before trying to formulate some sort of response. Athena shifted Augustus in her arms, cuddling him closer as she tried to discern what her working hours were like for the week ahead. The owner, Mr Flourish’s son, had been very understanding and had afforded her a few days to get her affairs in order. Embarrassing though the job had been at first, Athena had rapidly established herself and had proved her usefulness. Regardless of her own reservations about her character and her suitability for the job, the young Mr Flourish had come to rely on her as he increasingly found himself without time to devote to the bookshop as a result of his increasingly expanding family.

“They’re a bit odd at the moment because of, well, this…” Athena pursed her lips and her brow came down into a furrow again as she tried to balance her words with the truth. She didn’t know how to be tactful. It seemed as though Mr Flourish understood better than she herself did just exactly how her current situation would pan out; so much so that he had prepared for it and had chuckled heartily when she had flooed him quickly to explain that she could not come in that afternoon. Leaving the Rookwood family had not been done before. Those who did didn’t often come back alive or succeed in their quest for liberty. Athena had, comparatively, just been let go. Having married into the illegitimate line, disgraced and illegitimate herself, she found herself with four children, all of whom were unwanted by their fathers. Kendall and Augustus had a lot to answer for but Athena was determined that somehow, in whatever manner the situation demanded, she was going to make her children’s lives worth living and she wanted, as far as possible, to do that by herself. No more dependency – however antithetical it was to decide that but then look to Albus for accommodation. She’d bury her pride for now.

“I don’t tend to do nights now,” she decided to take this line of tact, “I am usually opening and I then leave just after lunch – two o’clock, normally. They have all been very good to me, though, so I’m probably as flexible as …” Athena felt her cheeks warm as she finished her sentence, “you.”

Thankfully, the charming manner in which children were incapable of masking their true feelings prevented Athena from dying of shame and embarrassment at her Freudianesque slip. She looked around, her hand absently moving across her throat as she realised she wasn’t wearing any jewellery she could play with. She couldn’t bounce her knees either, for fear of waking Augustus, and her old, teenaged habit of biting her thumbnail had been scared off by her discovery of that nail polish that made the whole experience rather unpleasant. So instead she sat and waited and watched as Cecilia and Aurelia excused themselves before bounding out of the room. Something rose within Athena and she was glad that, amidst her internal meltdown, she was able to form words.

“Pyjamas are in the-”

“We know!” Aurelia called and then her voice drowned away, the sound of their feet banging on the staircase following, leaving Albus and Athena with two weary babies and dinner to clear up.

Athena rose tentatively, securing her arms around Augustus who she shifted so his head fell into her neck instead. He complained quietly in her ear and wriggled a little but soon settled back to his quiet snores and his dreams, allowing Athena a spare hand to aid with piling the plates. However, the impatient witch that she was she soon took her wand from her pocket and sent it all into the kitchen to stack itself. After blowing out the candles, Athena followed Albus, unsure who she was shadowing: her son or her … friend, and decided to broach what had really come to parallel her time in the bookshop – a somewhat woolly testament to the fact that the woman standing in her socks, in socks at all, as tall and pale and gaunt as ever, was not the fifteen year old who had gotten her future husband into bed by reading his PlayWizard magazines and neither was she the woman whose prejudices ran as deep and as fiercely as her blood did.

“I am … helping or I’m something more of a hindrance, I’m not sure, with the students that were exiled from Hogwarts because of those awful decrees and…” Athena readjusted Augustus in her arms as she tried to think about what she was trying to say. “I’ve been helping Theodore with the Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons so I’m not … I mean, the children have been,” she sighed and rubbed her hand across her face, pinching the bridge of her nose as she continued to battle to find some semblance of the eloquence that her father had painstakingly tried to instil into her – apparently to no avail or success.

She felt as though she somehow owed Albus an explanation. She couldn’t be coming and going with the children like some sort of crazed clockwork banshee as she had been. Any excuse she could find to get them out of Rookwood manor she took but there was sharp, glaring difference to their situation then and now: now, they were safe. She would not have to pack them up and sit them with Elijah’s children while she helped the werewolves and vampires duel and learn how, exactly, to best the best. She’d enjoyed it, certainly, and Theodore’s unorthodox methods were a clear distinction from her matronly yet no less particular and unforgiving touch. They were like chalk and cheese but worked well together and the students had never, she doubted, known as much. She, certainly, had learnt her fair share from Theodore and vice versa. It was the most fun she’d had in a long time and she was loathe to give it up – or rather, strangely enough, she was loathe to abandon the students now that they were beginning to be autonomous magically. Had she been five years younger, she would have lauded the banishment of the ‘filthy half-breeds,’ this she was sure of.

“I’ve been balancing lessons with work and Elijah is usually looking after the children so that’s sort of how I’ve managed it because Theo would but he’s obviously got work and stuff so…” Athena bit her lip and raised her eyes to the ceiling, searching desperately in nothing for some guidance as to what she was trying to say. Instead, she just admitted she hadn’t a clue. “I’m not sure what my point is… just that it’s sort of … what I’m doing is less confined to what the bookshop wants and more with what the students need to learn and yeah…”

There, rounded off delightfully. Athena closed her eyes, wondering why in Salazar’s name she even bothered to open her mouth, and settled instead with attempting a bit of lighter, phatic conversation – something she could have done until she withered and died.

“Shall we put these two down before we pack up?” She inquired with a small smile.

((OOC: This was supposed to be up last Tuesday, but tonsilitis took its toll on me. Am I running out of sorry’s, love? XP ))

He’d already begun stacking up the coasters, cleaning up dropped titbits and a little pool of brown liquid from Aurelia’s place with a flick of his wand, Archie’s lower limbs gripping his waist tightly and head cradled on his left shoulder. The boy in question was now plucking at the hair on Albus’ nape, snagging his fingers on unruly locks and pulling through, and Albus spared a moment to despair on the patheticness that considered it acceptable to think that gratitude was a better reaction than annoyance.

That it was acceptable to remember Lily’s face when she was not much older than Archie and the self-satisfied, gap-toothed grin that stretched across her face when she grasped a lock of his hair around her palm, smoothening it against an identical black strand from her own head. ”Alby, same!”

”Yes, Lils.” He’d nuzzle into the cold, damp tip of her nose, while she’d scrunch up her nose due to apparent ticklishness and kick up her legs in delight. ”Same.”

“They have all been very good to me, though, so I’m probably as flexible as ........you.”

His lips curved up, probably as a self-deflective, unconscious habit, with more than a touch of absentmindedness, registering the information but not the words- mind somehow blank and yet still foggily flipping through childhood images, fixated on the possessive tug of fingers at his nape. Then he turned in order to gather up the glasses, but eyes landed on Athena who was just at his back; or rather inches away from his front now, tips of fingers brushing his belt loops as they twitched compulsively at her sides. One rose, skating across her collarbone in a mindlessly graceful gesture, and green eyes blinked in succession because just beyond those half-moon tipped nails, colour was blossoming- a pale, damask red. Eyes followed its progression, a long, slow flush up the lines of her throat, working up her jawline to settle, faint and warm in her cheeks.

Aw. James cooed inside his head, mirthful and malicious. My wee little brother is so innocent. Naive.

Albus cleared his throat, suddenly ridiculously conscious of how his own Adam’s apple bobbed over as he swallowed over dry spit. There was nothing in the room for a second, not even air, silence weighing down till his skin threatened to split itself open, gaze lingering on the pale bridge of her nose, stuck somewhere in between two dangerous destinations above and below- and the girls took this opportune moment to call out their nightly wishes, bounding out of the room. Both the adults’ heads turned towards the doorway in synchronisation, his more an unconscious response to stimulus than anything else, and his arms tightened around Archie’s, mind all of a sudden afraid of dropping him. Relief, and the feeling of something important just slipping out of your grasp, warred in his insides- but distracted by the girls’ exits or no, his skin still prickled with the sense of being distinctly wrongfooted. What had just happened? Did something even happen?

Something brushed past the knee of his trousers, something ephemeral and downy-soft, probably the cuff of her cashmere sweater; and she was up on her feet, stacking plates and tucking Gus’ head under her chin. What just happened, Albus Potter, was your mind choosing to behave like that of an immature teenager’s, gasping at misfortunate puns. said his own voice, far more sensible than his brother had ever been. The little quirk of the lips that that thought provided lasted for his entire trip to the kitchenette and back, depositing used dishes and cutlery into the sink, Athena trailing behind.

She had started talking again, going on about schools and children and decrees in a round-the-mulberry-bush, such an utterly non-Athena manner that it seemed laughable that the straight backed, stiff nosed Pureblood matriarch whose forbearing eyes were darker than the cloak that trailed from her shoulders, the black feathers of the overbearing predatory bird protectively encasing her brood- was the same girl with brown hair cast gold under the light, frizzing past her ears, narrow shoulders encased in a woollen sweater, socked feet bare against the tiles, dwarfed under the child piled in her arms breathing bubbles against her chest.

“I know.” He cut in suddenly, somewhere between the pauses that were liberally scattered in her speech. It sounded sudden to his ears because he didn’t know where the conversation was going, provided he had ever known, wasn’t aware of the purpose behind his words except to soothe the slightly frazzled edge that Athena sported ever since she had begun this strain of talk. Obvious, and ironic, that two people that had no difficulty in drawing up useless words from the well of polite conversation in standard situations with strangers, acquaintances........should find it so complicated to find words for friends sharing one roof. The thought caused some of the lines lingering around his mouth to lighten. Friends indeed. “I......had been informed of this institute at some point. Its commendable, what they’re....you’re trying to do. I came to know because they needed someone for Potions or Arithmancy....” And just like that, the awkwardness was back and his effort to put her at ease and behave like a friend dashed to the ground. Because the follow up was natural, wasn’t it? They needed someone, and he knew about the institute, yet she didn’t see him there during her frequent stints because he hadn’t replied to the offer; which was tantamount to refusal. He, a Potter, had refused to help young wizards and witches in pursuing their education in spite of the prejudiced tyranny of others- while she, a young Rookwood mother of four with barely a roof over her head, was contemplating how to split her time between the children in whose veins her blood flowed, and ‘filthy halfbreeds’.

And this wasn’t the first time that Albus had felt unworthy of his name. When it had been Dad or James or Mum......there had been nothing but furious resentment accompanying the feeling. Now.......it didn’t even occur to him to be contradictory. The prickles of shame slowly crawling up his spine rendered him incapable of it.

“Shall we put these two down before we pack up?”

“Sure.” His shoulder brushed past Athena’s when he made for the door that led to her room, temporarily a nursery for the boys, eyes averted unconsciously, hand tightening mindfully as he ducked beneath the doorway to save Archie’s elbow from a battering by the solid doorknob. His footsteps were soundless, even as his soled shoes padded softly over the tiles to the twin bed, grip shifting from the small of Archie’s back to his armpits, hoisting him out and setting him down slowly on the fluffy mattress. The soft thump knocked a rattled breath out of that pygmy chest, and Archie smiled sleepily, eyes making a valiant attempt to remain open but being reduced to little slits of crystalline blue that peeked amidst charcoal lashes.

Before his mind could navigate past the dangerous quagmires of acceptable boundaries and ‘right’ and ‘appropriate’- his knees had knelt, his lips already brushing past the soft, slightly sweat-damped curls over Archie’s temple, the boy in question bestowing a last, cherub-ish smile at the world in response before stretching his mouth wide and kicking his heels up, head sinking into the plush depths of the pillow. The world remained still for a while, distant and hiding outside the windowsill- while this moment remained suspended in time, as securely captured as the scene within the glass of a snow globe, fragile and pristine. Nothing like shame felt a few seconds prior, or unease, or awkwardness, or any other human weakness felt equal to contaminating it. It just existed, safe, tucked away somewhere under Archie’s lashes, hidden for all its contentment.

“You’re.....lucky, you know.” His thumb brushed over Archie’s brow once, smoothening out creases, half expecting to find soot clinging to the cuticle once it was drawn away.  Because of them. For them. His voice was quiet enough not to disturb a shade, or the fey that might descend upon the boys’ lids any second, ready to sprinkle the sand of sleep into their eyes and coax them away to brighter lands. “Really, really lucky.”

(OOC: I'll forgive you again, my love! I quoted Yeats in this. Clearly felt fairly poetic. <3)

---

“You know.”

The first thing that registered tightly within her chest was the feeling of abject hurt and the reflexive need to criticise; the latter was buried, however, because following its manifestation, an ireful introspective voice accused her of hypocrisy that she knew she was guilty of. A sweeping notion of morality had infected her, niggling beneath her skin and replacing the surface fibres, endeavouring in earnest to create this fragmented creature who was still very much the woman who had made those damp, moulding cells her four walls yet a different animal, a patchwork cloth that was determined to be docile, the picture of calm and the epitome of domesticity. It just wasn’t there. The silken panther still swept her cave, hostile to friends, deadly to enemies. It had yet to submit to the ridicule of becoming a fuzzy woodland creature, absurdly terrified of wolves with a penchant for baking cupcakes and visiting old ladies who led double lives as extreme sports stars. It just wasn’t going to happen just yet. She was still Athena Goyle. Rookwood. Conniving. Selfish. Vindictive. Callous. Ambitious. Loyal. Mother. Kind. Broken. Vulnerable. Helpless.

Up there some hawk or owl has struck,
Dropping out of sky or rock,
A stricken rabbit is crying out,
And its cry distracts my thought.

There was sense in remaining mute, giving her voice no opportune juncture in which to expel itself into the air. There was sense in cradling her boy that bit closer to her chest, breath in the sweet smell of his hair and listen to the soft breathing, feeling its gentle caress against her throat. There was sense in padding behind, her sock-clad feet helping to slide her along the floorboards but navigating her past the one that gave the most deadly creak. Her arms winding tighter around her son she followed behind the man who held her other with such care and a natural way that had been missed, mourned, for so long. The cavernous manor had given her thoughts room to roam without leave nor rebuke. In the evenings, when the solar had grown quiet, then damp with those same feelings she had harboured, the regret, the sorrow, the fervent desire to go elsewhere, to be elsewhere, be better. But she wouldn’t go. Stoic and silent she’d sit there until the door opened and closed and into the orange, flickering light her husband would step, his face worn and tired. No smile he managed to raise. No smile did she return. To their room he retreated, without so much as a thought to their children. Then his double would step in, take off his tie and unbutton his shirt. To her hair he’d press a kiss, murmur ‘good night’ and he, too, would leave; not a whit given to his own, sweet girls.

Those girls rushed in, pyjamas askew, toes wriggling in their socks. Their hair, dark, raven tresses, had been left to fall around them and fanned out behind them as they grasped first for Athena where she had perched herself on the soft duvet that had been tucked around Augustus. Kisses fell upon her cheek, expressions of love and hope that she slept well herself ringing out into the warm air. In her stupor, Athena found the ability to return the affection, grasping each other girls tight to her before letting them free to spring upon Albus. Those same kisses were sparkled upon his skin, those same words leant to him, and then they were gone, the storm over and the ground settled, the wind whistling away with the distant sound of giggles. Bouncing bedsprings and rumpling covers sounded out, breaking the silence before another, more final quieting set down over the upper rooms. Then they were just themselves, with their boys, their girls disappearing to dreamland, or waiting impatiently for them to put their heads around the door, unwittingly wandering into a demand for a story they’d so willingly, contentedly tell.

A sad, small smile crossed her features and her eyes dropped, lilting over her son whose hands had curled around his favoured, stuffed fox. His breath was blowing the hair in the fox’s ears back and forth but the animal’s expression did not change for it, merely remaining sightless yet happy, the curve of its little, black cotton mouth steadfast. Her fingers traced the sides of his eyes, his long, strong nose which belonged so classically to his father and the little pert mouth that was her own. There was so much of them that they had yet to see. So much of her children, all of them, that she knew that she would not have done in the dark corners of the manor. Here they could breath and rush and play and be children. Away from the oppressive atmosphere of discontent and putrid unhappiness they could learn how to be themselves, what fit and what did not. They were not to be forced into suits and dresses and taught how to be for this man, this woman, these people. They would be Aurelia, Cecilia, Augustus and Archibald; and she, she would be Athena, finally.

“Not nearly as lucky as they are,” Athena murmured, furling a curl around her son’s ear, “to have someone as kind as you willing to take a chance on them. To give them a home. A half decent chance. I can’t tell you properly, can’t explain, how grateful I am to you for this, for everything. I don’t even know where to begin to try to repay you, Albus. I owe so much to you. You never had to do this but you did. I made the wrong bed. You could have left me to lay in it but for some reason you didn’t and I think I’m as lucky for you as I am for them,” her gentle gaze returned to her son, “They’re the only good bit of all of my mistakes. They’re the only part that’s made it all worthwhile. As for the rest, I don’t even have an answer for it anymore. I’ve just been so stupid all this time. H-how do I even know if I’m doing right by them? When all I’ve ever done is made bad choices?”

(( [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
I blame the general incoherence of the first part of the post on that ^^ I was FEELING too much XP ))


It was like being in a dream.

Blurry, like the whited out edges of clouds, the fronds trailing in the summer sky, catching at corners of your vision. Like frosted glass of the neighbourhood sweet shop that clouded over with breath every time you pressed your nose against it, eager, bright little eyes seeking out all the candied treasures the forbidden racks had to offer. Like watching a familiar scene through dimmed eyes, loved faces tugging at your heartstrings, light refracting off the dewdrops clinging to eyelashes.

It was too bright, too bright for the human heart to witness before faltering at least once, whiting out your vision only to shatter in a kaleidoscopic dazzle of colours. A scene from a dream, tragically beautiful in the way it could never be real; yet caught in the living world, masquerading as a simple moment that sneaks up on your heels and quickly darts away, quiet, unnoticed- before you could blink, turn and clutch it to your chest before it was gone forever.

Albus was a writer. It was his nature to cling to dreams, fashion scenes out of the building blocks of imagination, spin shiny worlds out of candy-bright yarn. This was what he took solace in, in creation, and it was a writer’s ever-constant, cold comfort that reality would always pale a little to what the mind could create. No matter how brilliant life got, there was always something a little better to think up.

Not now.

Now he could hear the pitter-patter of bare feet thudding over cool tiles, and the rustle of night clothes, and soft laughter trailing in the wake of two voices taking his name in affection. Now he could see nothing beyond the dark hair obscuring his vision even as hugs and kisses were flung his way like gold coins in a beggar’s bowl, beyond Ceci’s mischievous whites flashing as she extorted another promise for pink paint for their walls tomorrow, beyond Aurelia’s face still caught in a cage of shyness, like it wasn’t quite sure it was allowed to smile as wide as it wished, Archie cuddled underneath the covers snoring away to glory already, Athena looking on with glazed eyes like she was treating this to be as real as he was, which meant not at all, like she was still living in some shadowed corner of her home somewhere inside that head. Now he could feel only comforting squeeze of little palms on his hand, that were probably seeking reassurance but didn’t know how much they warmed, the downright painful catch in his throat as he wished them a good night, the impossible urge that rose all of a sudden to erase that unhappy little twist from Athena’s mouth, draw her out of the dark halls where she was wandering and bring her here, among them, into the dream, because-

Because its real, Athena. Real. Can you believe it?

Everything grew quiet in the aftermath, and it was the silence that didn’t like to be broken, the silence to whose sound people could drift along for hours and hours because it hearkened to peace. But Athena broke it, and Albus looked up, and he let her speak. Let her pour whatever was in her mind out, and while the little speech would sound very pretty, with all the nice words and turns of phrases like ‘gratitude’ and ‘how could I ever repay you’, her low, murmuring spring voice had never stung his ears more.

And if they were childhood friends, or anything unlike the Slytherins they were pretending not to be, he would have stared her in the eye and informed her of her obtuseness. Waved a hand around them, and asked her in as ridiculous a tone as the question deserved, if any of this even remotely resembled a hardship for him. If she truly understood the depth of the favour she was doing for him. But he didn’t, because honesty was scary, and awkward friendship being formed or not, he still couldn’t smirk and tease her like he would Jack. Standing in striped socks and in every way out of place and vulnerable, she retained the kind of poise that compelled him to be formal, and fumbling, those gentle, unreadable eyes seeming ready in a distance to turn disapproving and distant if he crossed one line too fast. The kind of graceful composure that allowed her to speak of owing him everything with the same collectedness that she would use while speaking about the weather while he sat, spine bent, at a distance, unable to correct her with the fierceness it deserved.

“You repay me,’ Albus said, and he could almost ignore the tiny drop of pride felt at the utter composure of his own voice, “by never mentioning, remotely alluding, or even thinking about owing me again. And if you attribute this to my inherent ‘nobility’ or altruism, you’d do well to remember that I was a Slytherin the same as you were and we never do anything unless we truly want to, and I’ll be damned, Athena Goyle,” And suddenly, the distance wasn’t so far after all, and meeting her gaze with cool green fire not so daunting, and maybe this was a lot more dangerous than teasing, but he was not letting her feel obliged for filling up his empty house, “before you feel gratitude over something I bloody well want to do.”

The air came rushing out of his chest after that, filling the room in quiet exhales, taking the intensity along with it. Because that one, good look into pale blue eyes had let in a glimpse into doubts, uncertainties and fears belonging to the other occupant of the room, perhaps as vast as his. His words were quieter, trailing into the silence, gaze diverting to the solitary window casting night into the room. “You know. Inside all our layers. Idiosyncrasies, pretenses, complexes. We’re all very simple, stupid people.” The reflection staring back at him was that of a pale-faced, dark-haired man who looked too much like a boy. “All we need is love. Not a single thing more. And as long as we have that, nothing can ever go wrong.”

And he dared to look away from his image, up at her face, and smile faintly- because you could see it in the cleft of Ceci’s cheek, in the brightness in Archie’s smile, the carelessness with which Gus’ head lolled in sleep, cradled against a steady shoulder: how much their mother loved them. How much she had to love them to desert everything and everyone she’d known like this, and that in spite of bad decisions, her standing there before him was the greatest proof of the fact that she’d do right by them even if it meant doing wrong by herself all her life.

(OOC: Twas perfect. Sorry, I put this off. I couldn't take the angst and the fact that I wanted to do this with them. So, here you go! Hope it's alright!)

When she had been tiny, a miniscule little figure with jet hair and wide, robin’s egg eyes, her father would sit with her into the small, waking hours and with warm hands and a soothing voice he’d scare away the nightmares that frightened her form. When she had gotten bigger, taller, with long, sprawling curls and inquisitive eyes she’d sit with him, showing him books and little trinkets she’d found in the grounds during her afternoon walk with her step-mother. He’d smooth back a ringlet from her cheek, wind the covers around her and kiss her forehead, content to read to her until she dropped off into her dreams curled in against his chest. After he suffered the wrath of the then Dark Lord, crippling, writhing and screaming underneath the fizzling might of an unforgivable curse, he ventured to sit with her no longer and the nights were spent sat up, the sheets kicked around her legs, the chilled air raising gooseflesh in her skin. She’d look, the moon in her wide, bluebell gaze, but he would not come. The books lay untouched. The trinkets uncared for. His gaze would not meet hers. His voice would not bring “Thea” into the air. Stiff and correct he’d call her Athena. Hardened and exacting, she’d call him father – the endearment of “daddy” long forgotten.

When her sons had been small, minute themselves with their inky hair and vast, staring dark eyes, she would sit with them, weary of rising at every call. Against the end of their cradle she’d sit in her periwinkle nightdress, her knees drawn up to her chest, the palms of her hands stealing the tears from her cheeks. When they tittered, she’d turn to her hands and to her knees and rise shakily to her feet, braced by the side of the cot. Then, she’d lift them, disentangle them from the blankets and carry them to the window seat where she’d sit and quietly sing until their dreams grew pure once more. When they grew, shooting up tall all of a sudden, taking after their father and yet their mother with their soft, feathery locks, their eyes grew enquiring and when she took them from the blankets she’d sit with them and try to memorise their sleepy smiles and their curiosity for one another and for her. In the twilight they’d sit and they’d read by candlelight or play as loudly as they dared until, worn out, they’d retire to the window seat and sleep ‘til sunrise, curled into each other against the soft, plush pillows. Like that, they’d somehow survive, though her eyes would always watch the brass sparkling in the low moonlight, wondering when it would turn, praying it did, disappointed each time it didn’t. For, he didn’t come and his voice, too, would not utter her name though his hands would draw her near. When he’d whisper “Thea,” her muscles would contract, flinch. When he’d give a passing glance to their sons, the ones meant to be their pride and their joy, unseeingly he’d pass over them, a great pain would rock within her, the desire to tear him away, to forbid him from appraising them, rising to her lips and to her fingertips for they were no sons of his in anything more than blood, had brought her to this. The endearment had never so much as brushed their lips.

Here, as the light in the sky began to die, chased from the billowing sheet of blue by the clouds turning in, they sat on the soft blankets, listening to the snuffling snores, their fingers absently combing through the soft, pitch curls that accented the snowy porcelain skin of their boys. Their chests rose and fell, unbeknownst to the thunder of the heartbeats in the chests of their elders. They slept on in peace without the need to wake, without the fear of untoward dreams. They sat not because they had to but because they want to. From the gentle, peaceful expression of her baby, Athena lifted her eyes, the colour still of fresh bluebells in spring. Her name rattled through the air, attached to passion not resignation or sorrow, attached to a man whose innate goodness did, she believed, supersede desire. Her lips parted, words involuntary but not quite reaching into the air. Living as a Slytherin was like living with a bartered life. You give, someone takes and they return the favour with a give and take of their own. Albus had given. Reflexively, she’d desired to return, to repay. But there was nothing in it. To repay was to breathe real air, instead of the carbon from her own lungs, fear forbidding her to shudder a breath. To repay was to embolden the children. To repay was to sit in the small hours, to pour over books, to look at trinkets again, to smile, to laugh, to feel human again.

“Thank you,” she shivered out a whisper, her glassy eyes twinkling in the scorched light that was retreating from the room.

Lifting herself from the softness of the bed, Athena found her feet and turned, tucking the covers closer around her son. He shifted a little but stirred no further. Her feet picked across the room and she knelt a little before Albus to brush her lips against his cheek. Her hand came up involuntarily, her fingertips touching at his jaw, and she paused, her breath catching at the back of her throat as she realised how close she was to him. She could smell the soap on his skin and the faint aroma left behind by a potion he must have brewed recently. Then, beneath that it was a scent so very much belonging to Albus: honey and spice – sweetness and tanginess. A mix of flavour just as he was a mixed batch of the altruism he denied possessing and the Slytherin traits they both shared. She was grateful for it all, whatever and regardless of what he said.

Smiling a little, embarrassment colouring her cheeks, Athena moved back a little and ran her fingertips briefly across his jaw, legitimising – at least in her mind – their being there in the first place. Her eyes flicked up to his and she knew then that she finally understood the hubbub about those eyes. The colour of tree leaves in the height of summer, beneath the beating sun, on the back of a breeze, or the shade of emeralds set in a headdress. Priceless. Glorious. So very special. Swallowing, Athena managed to raise another smile to her lips, the colour in her own cheeks mingling the staring, Slytherin green with a Gryffindor scarlet.

“You are so loved, Albus,” she murmured genuinely, bobbing her knuckle gently against his chin.

She dropped her gaze and moved a little, leaning over the dark-haired man long enough to draw the covers up around her son. After pressing a kiss to her forehead she retreated to the opposing side of the room to administer the same final preparations for sleep. After passing a kiss to her younger son she straightened herself, rearing to her full, albeit miniscule, height. After trading a smile with Albus she slid from the room, paving carefully across the floorboards before ducking into the girls’ room where they had gone to bed with the sun, soft snores emanating from them also. After smoothing the blankets around them both, she brought down the blinds over the windows, blotting out the last of the lazy sunshine dipping low behind the roofs and chimney stacks. Then, she took to the lower level of the house, picking her down the stairs before re-entering the kitchen, her hands rolling the sleeves of her maroon cardigan to her elbows.

Twiddling the taps, jets of hot water sprang through into the sink and slowly, Athena began to move about the kitchen, trying to get to grips with where everything was. Pasta in this cupboard. Spices in this one. Oh, there are the plates. Glasses here? A rogue cup. A moneybox. Give it a shake. No, an empty moneybox. She added the galleon that was in her pocket. Then, as the sink began to fill through she added some washing up liquid and bubbles began to grow on the top of the water’s surface. After shutting off the taps, Athena took note of the old radio sat on the windowsill next to a deceased bee. Closer inspection informed her that, with a twitch of its leg, the bee wasn’t so dead after all. Athena turned on the radio and took a moment to fetch the bee a spoon which she filled with a drizzle of water and a sprinkle of sugar. With a small, concern look changing her expression she set the spoon down next to the bee. Then she turned up the radio a little bit as the presenter introduced a song and she slowly but surely got to working through the pots, pans and dishes, the cloth squeezed between her fingers.

There’s just no telling where this river will flow
I’ve got no choice in the matter, I’m just going where it goes

Their eyes were bound by a thread.

A thin, sharp, spindly thing; stringing its way from forest green to bluest cerulean, binding, twisting, twining. Getting more and more entangled with every second they were cowardly enough not to avert their gaze, brave enough to keep looking. A paintbrush that gathered the two hues together as if in a seascape, colouring the waves and the water and the crests and troughs with a glorious sea green that was as inseparable as black and white in grey, that brought out the brightest and clearest and best of both their hues.

Chapped lips settled on his jawline, echoing the remnants of a memory behind bars that had been suppressed but never really erased. Faint, butterfly-light touches fleeted past his cheek, the feathery soft warmth of human fingertips almost indistinguishable against the warm cast of breath washing over his jaw. Green eyes didn’t blink, with the forced steadiness, stiffness of one too dazed to shatter the spell. Thoughts were caught in a reloop. If she moved her hand a little lower, if those nails skated down, they’d touch upon an almost violent thrumming under the skin. A running beat under the tendon of the neck, the rapidity of a bird thrumming its winds to stay afloat in the winds, fly, keep alive.

The arch of her Grecian nose lifted, chest rising and pulling back in as if taking in a life breath, drawing a scent in and keeping it within for safekeeping. His lips flickered.

Go...go away......don’t..

“You are so loved, Albus.”

The presence shifted back, she got up to tuck in her son’s covers, and his eyelids settled down in their place, closed irrevocably. It wasn’t until faint footsteps alerted him to the leaving of the fey from the room that they finally lifted open, taking in the room cloaked in dusk, mitigated by the setting sun’s last rays. The silence had never seemed fuller.

There was only the sound of the boys breathing, their puffs of breath brushing past the white cotton of the pillowcases to penetrate the quiet. Albus rose, and stood, stationary, for what felt like millenia stretching into minutes.

“Hear that, boys? That’s your mother.” The chuckle that breathed past his lips was helplessly small, echoing into a smile. “Best bloody liar I’ve ever seen.”

~

A song had started somewhere, in the precincts of his own kitchen. He hadn’t known the old thing even worked anymore. It had been a housewarming gift from.......he didn’t quite remember. One of the myriad of his Muggle-obsessed relatives- catching Muggle stations and playing their tunes. The last memory he had connecting to it was flinging the battered old thing to the ground in a moody flash of temper some six years ago. On the first morning of his waking up in a house other than the Potter home, he had blearily opened his eyes and stumbled to the kitchenette for a glass of water, stubbing his big toe on the way- and there the ratty old thing was, sneaked on his counter by some well-meaning family member, the morning sunlight trickling past its rusty old knobs, the only object that had made it into his flat from his childhood home. Even his trunk had been new.

Albus wondered if the woman washing their dishes would admonish him for still having a trunk in spite of perfectly functional closets and moving here years ago. Then wondered if it was an absolutely insane thing to wonder about.

Maybe that was the most insane thing of all, how natural it all felt, to toe off his shoes at the doorway and pad into the kitchenette, feel the cold sink in from the tile to the crevices between his toes, anchor his heels. To summon the drying flannel while Athena plunged her hands elbow-deep into the sink, scrubbing the dishes as if she’d been doing them by hand all her life. To smooth the cloth over and over the ceramic plates and watch the droplets soak in, as soon as they were done washing, then stacking them dry and gleaming in the rack; while the silence remained ever at bay by one song playing into another from the little black contraption on the windowsill.

Dusk dwindled inexorably into night and the hour crawled on, the lack of conversation settled around them as warm and comfortable as a worn, familiar blanket.......and yet not. Their hands worked, and Albus felt his lips flicker a number of times, a thousand possible words springing to mind, a thousand possible lines of conversation but his mouth always closed before he could give voice to any of them. This wasn’t a family gathering where he had to fake opinions and tease about subjects he couldn’t give an inch of a f*ck about and paste smiles. The absence of words between them now didn’t feel awkward like it did with so many other people; but for a change, he wanted to talk. Wanted to stop thinking about himself and his family and his issues; to laugh, to know, to forget.

And so the first genuine, un-premeditated words that rose to his tongue escaped. “This is weird.”

And then he blinked, and backtracked. Merlin, of course he backtracked. “I mean.....I’ve washed a lot of dishes, before. Done a lot of chores. But never really with someone else. Have someone else lend a hand, that is.” He wasn’t quite stupid enough to append a- “Have you?” to the end of that sentence. His eyes fixated on the bee that was now fluttering on the windowsill, buzzing halfheartedly a number of times, poised to launch into flight. His voice pitched off lower with the next sentence, and he inwardly groaned when he realised it was about to attempt a joking tone. “You really shouldn’t get me used to this, you know.”

This was obviously an opportune moment to put back the last dish that he had been drying for the past fifteen minutes back into the rack. Albus turned his back to the counter, closed his eyes, turned around again- and then started pulling out the ingredients for coffee. Dirtying more utensils while they had just managed to clean all of them did not seem like a sensible plan, but surely caffeine could be his only saviour now.

His mouth though, evidently wasn’t quite done yet. “I always thought you were an ice sculpture back then. In Hogwarts.”

We are water.... crooned the radio to them from the sill again, in a voice that was just sweet enough to get on his nerve. Apparently someone really liked that song. We flow and flow.

“You’re weird,” she retorted, her lips widening outwards into a smile.

The words had robbed themselves of her throat without a second thought given to their release. It was too easy to use those fingers that had never seen a day’s work to rub a sodden cloth across cutlery, plates and pans. It was too easy to stand in that kitchen. Too easy to smirk back at Albus. Too easy to just be there, with him, with the mess that the cooking had made and all the rest of it. It was never meant to be her life, this she was painfully aware of. She was meant to be shut up in her tower, surrounded by finery, surrounded by the idea of happiness but never the thing itself. She wasn’t going to think for one minute that she’d found it here, in the brooding walls that had not seen sunshine smiles and the raucousness of children in this life, in this state. Perhaps, a few owners ago it might have done. There was a part of her that wondered whether the house, and too its owner, dared remember what it was like when it was easy, when standing at this counter exchanging the dirty bowls from scalding water to a tea towel to the side once more, to be put away when everything was finished. She wondered if it had ever been like this or whether it was a monument to what had deteriorated in the House of Potter so violently, so publically and so irrevocably. It was silent, as the grave. No longer.

“Me neither,” she admitted lightly, placing the last of the cutlery on the draining board. “Though, just to keep you on your toes, I’ll let you do the washing up tomorrow. I’ll sit and supervise.”

It was the fear of growing too used to the house, to used to the familiarity of it, too used to him that kept Athena’s mind steady and focused. Determined to be dependent on no one, she was confident that it would not be a permanent fixture – herself and her children in Albus’ home. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t afford for it to be. Too long and she risked getting attached and more crucially, more heartbreakingly, she risked letting the children get attached as though it wasn't already a terrible steep slope she was sliding down, as though it wasn’t a given thing that when the time game they’d be hurt and upset and let down. She wanted it on her own terms. She didn’t want to have to run away again. She wanted to be able to say that she could afford somewhere. She wanted to be able to have a home of her own for herself and for her children. She wanted to do that sooner before a redhead of some description – as was the Potter way, of course – inserted herself into Albus’ life and rightly set is mind into wondering about having his own family that was his own flesh and blood, not this interim one that he had no business nor gain in allowing stay with him regardless of what he claimed. She still felt as though she stuck out sore and vulnerable. There was no safety in this house, no safety in Albus. No matter how much she wished there to be, the hour glass had been turned over and there was only a matter of time before the sand ran out.

Lifting her hands from the bowl, suddenly feeling rather melancholy, Athena wiped her hands on the tea towel to her left and reached to hang it up before spilling the water down the drain and proceeding to wipe off the sink after wringing out the cloth. Then, the sink was clean and Albus, seemingly intent on making more mess, was busy making coffee. Athena smirked despite herself. She didn’t care. Not really. No, not while she still had the time. She was going to enjoy every mess, she decided, and guard herself and the children as much as possible but even the best intentions often came with complications – the first, last and most pressing being that that slippery slope was long gone and she was neck deep in water she couldn’t tread, tempted to give in, out of the ability, out of the energy, to say no but still fighting out of the sake of fear. Out of the sake of the what-ifs attached to just accepting the scenario afforded to her. She was dead in the water.

Athena blinked, leaning back against the countertop as she wrapped her cardigan around her. She smirked a little. Ice sculpture, indeed. She remembered a very different version of herself, of course. It was a better time, she knew. A time before all of the madness, when she didn’t bear her crimes in her skin and before she had become bogged down with her poor choices. When her father had been still alive. When her step-mother lived on. With Tobias. Pricilla. Darius. Theodore. Elijah. The Yaxley brothers. Her friends. Kendall. Merlin, Kendall. When everything had been good and right and without the complications of family and children when sex was a tryst in the boy’s dormitory and wasn’t laden with all of the emotional guff – it was just sex. She’d been Darius’ trophy then. A Flint problem rather than that of the Rookwoods. She hadn’t loved him, barely liked him, but the family was good, the money even better and although he was rough around the edges, cruel, demonstrative, in no way good at all… in fact, terrible, no, there was no defending him. Even then she’d been at a loss. Even then weak. Dependent. Dependent on Kendall. She missed who he had been then. Circumstance had ruined them all, however. Tobias. Pricilla. Darius. Theodore. Elijah. The Yaxley brothers. Kendall. Herself. They were all ruined.

“I think the idea was to be ‘unattainable,’” Athena laughed a little, not forgetting the air-quotes. “So, ice sculpture will do. It was better then, though, I think. It might be a bit romanticised in my head but I walked around with all of the faults of my class and upbringing and the only thing I had to worry about was whether the Prefects were going to catch me and Flint behind the suit of armour we’d hidden by, snogging our guts out.” Athena shuddered. It had never been a good experience, kissing Darius. He only had one thing going for him and at the time, Athena’s habit of jumping in and out of bed with whomsoever she pleased served him well in being able to batten her down. She had been a firecracker rather than a sculpture. She’d been always moving, erratic and insatiable. Tobias had once joked that it would make a Slytherin a lucky boy indeed to find her in his bed waiting for him, having picked him. Because she did the picking, not the other way around. Of course, the egotistical wretch that she had been she’d lapped it up. The idea now made her feel a little bit queasy, a testament, perhaps, to the shift in her priorities.

“I think you qualified then as pretty icy too,” Athena pointed out, opening one of the cupboards and happening, much to her quiet delight, immediately upon two mugs. She carried them over, setting them down for him. “Can I have one too, please, if you’re making?” She asked hesitantly, relinquishing the mug she’d set down last a little slower than the first.  She allowed a little smile to break past her lips for his benefit and lingered by his side, her hip against the counter as she played idly with a bit of thread loose on her cardigan cuff.

“The Potter that made our dungeons home,” she nudged him playfully with her shoulder and smirked a little. “We were in the same DADA class, d’you remember? Shared it with Hufflepuff and the majority of the boys used to try and make them cry. Majority of the girls, too, come to think about it.” She laughed gently, the sound seeping away before it even truly began. “Was it really odd at first? Being in Slytherin, I mean. Tell me to bore off if you want but I would’ve imagined you would’ve wanted to be like your dad a bit at ten and eleven. I know I adored mine but …”

Athena rolled her lips together thoughtfully. “Do you ever feel like we lost something through being their kids? My dad, whose claim to infamy was his love of casting Unforgivables on first years in his seventh under the tutelage of the Carrows, a man who got his arse saved by people who shouldn’t have done it when he wouldn’t have done the same for them… and you, whose dad never stopped being Harry Potter. No one ever forgot, either. Like an announcement, isn’t it? He could never just be your dad just like mine would never go anywhere with me just in case someone remembered. So I got my grandfather who’d take me to the pub rather than the dress shop like I wanted and they’d give me enough sickles to buy the whisky they wanted and a glass of something fizzy for me. Were we ever their kids or Potter and Goyle numbers two and one, expected to fulfil the same ridiculous roles that they so kindly set out for us?”

Athena sighed, brushing her hand across the back of her neck. She harboured an immense amount of regret in regards to her father. In regards to her step-mother. She only wished she remembered something beyond the voice of her mother that had, with age, ebbed into nothingness, merely now just a feeling and a poor one at that. She could have reacted with less hate. She could have done so much. She could have married as her father had wanted. That was what they had fallen out over, of course. There weren’t enough men in the world for her. The ‘one’ was not in a catalogue of faces, blood statuses and financial records. She had wanted that dizzying, intoxicating kind of love. For her troubles she’d gotten a fleeting affection and a cracked heart. With no parents. Her grandparents had fought her corner insofar as their own prospects were concerned. It wouldn’t be long, she knew, until her grandmother got wind of this, until her grandfather would sit at the dining table, complain that there was no whisky to hand and try and teach the girls how to play his most favourite card games. Penelope would gripe, buzz around Athena like a thing possessed, fiddling over every detail, unable to quite fathom that after brokering the Rookwood marriage Athena had run away and was living in sin with a man she wasn’t even sleeping with. That bit would probably upset Penelope the most – the fact that she couldn’t and wouldn’t be able to reconcile the motivation behind being with Albus, especially in a platonic manner.

“Oh lay off of the lass, Penny. Be happy she’s not telling you she’s pregnant again like last time.” Odysseus would no doubt retort, silencing his indignant wife while he stole a look at Cecilia’s cards in order to help her plot her next move in the game. It would only further enrage the woman, of course. She’d demand a cup of tea. Athena would not think twice about obliging and she’d take up one of the babies, declare that some form of father was better than none at all, the reality at Rookwood manor, and then try and get around the awkward bits and pieces that included broaching when Athena would move out, get married again (can you see a theme, here?) and quit that ghastly job of hers. By then, the kettle would have boiled, Archie would have burst into tears and Athena would have gone so red it would be impossible to tell the difference between her and the tomatoes she could well have begun growing on the windowsill by then. She would have rather harboured the regret about her parents, or gone back and change it altogether, but instead the present and the not-to-distant future greeted her with much more open and potentially hilarious seas.

The kettle boiled.

“That got a bit intense, didn’t it?” Athena remarked airily, thoroughly finished off with what was coming out of her mouth and what was going through her mind. She abandoned herself in one of the chairs at the dining table, reeling as she finally allowed to wash over her what was a firm and very real reality. She was in a house that wasn’t her own, wasn’t even her marital home. She was living with a Potter. Her children had warm beds to sleep in, the reassurance that they wouldn’t wake up miles away from anyone being able to reach them, reassured that if needed, either Albus or Athena were just down the hall rather a whole wing away which was often the case at the manor. This was what had been offered to her, what she had chosen. Choice words would be said about it, too. She couldn’t find it within herself to regret her choice but there was this wonderment at it, at whether come the morning it would have been a dream. Was it already a dream?

…it’s real, Athena. Real. Can you believe it?

Leaning forward, Athena rested her elbow on the table top and dropped her chin into her palm as she looked at Albus, watching as he sorted out the coffees.

“Sorry,” Athena murmured. “I just feel a bit… I dunno. I guess it’s not sunk in properly. I think I’m half expecting to wake up in the manor again tomorrow but I don’t want to. I mean, is it so bad to want to get used to this, actually? Because this is… this is so much better than anything that’s been mustered up for me before by the powers that be and I guess I just don’t want the bubble to burst, to have everything snatched away again and it’s not as though I have anything, really. I mean, let’s face it, I’ve not got any money to speak of. My inheritance is tied up, it belongs to the boys. I’ve not got a home. I have my bookshop and I love it but it’s not conducive to anything. Next to no skills. No N.E.W.Ts, thank you Department of Magical Law and Enforcement. But I’m sat here at this table and I feel happier than I have felt in nearly three years. Because I’ve got the children and for some inexplicable reason at this moment I have you and it’s the best feeling… which probably means I won’t get up tomorrow for fear of it not being here, this place, and those children and you that I wake up to and instead that creaking old house, a few emaciated looking House Elves and someone who… I don’t even know anymore. And it’s stupid to feel that way, isn’t it?”

Spiel over, Athena rubbed her hand over her eyes, feeling the fatigue of the day. She’d have to write to Theodore tomorrow, perhaps rattle something off to Elijah and maybe think about speaking to Mira for the first time in months, nearly a year. Let’s face it, nearly two. Here lift had spiralled, she realised. But it all happened in this great big ridiculousness and now it was over. It was as though there had been a parlay, one that allowed her to breathe, to gain some perspective, to start running her life again properly. There was so much to do. There were socks to clean, find, pair and sacrifice to whatever washing device she used. She could do that. She could write her letters. She could spend her afternoon playing with her sons then once they were put down before dinner she could amuse the girls. She could do that. She could do all of that. Without, for the first time in a long while, having to look over her shoulder. She could breathe. It was real.

”This is weird.”

“You’re weird.”

“Mature.” He quipped, and it was an outright struggle to clamp down the smile, a joyous, uncontrollable thing intent on bursting past the seams, morphing the subdued features into something more inherently striking. They stood there, smiling ridiculously at each other for several odd moments, before Albus’s nail snagged on the top of the container brimming with roast coffee beans and he broke the connection, glancing down; something strangely, gladly light still whooshing through the empty space of his gut, making abdominal muscles curl in tightly on themselves. It was a half-forgotten sensation, the exhilarated sense of connection one got from quirking an eyebrow at your best mate from across the common room, or drinking the night away under the Hogwarts sky, wheezing from laughter induced by abysmal jokes, or the wink at a sibling and the communal high of the adrenaline wearing down in the wake of executing a successful prank on a particularly annoying older brother. It was the undeniably human miracle of crossing that bridge between one soul, one mind and the other, caught in a look or laugh or curl of the lip, perhaps fleeting, but endless, eternal in the second that it existed. It was the sense of not being alone in the world, for however short a period of time. Of being connected.

His fingers hooked into the smooth, circular steel cover, screwing it open with short, efficient movements- then tilting it over, letting the dark, mocha-hued grains pile in a small, brown heap at the bottom of the black ceramic mugs. Though now a little more muted, his lips still betrayed hints of a smile, accentuated by an excessively dry voice. “Supervise is a tame word; order about all you will. I exist to serve, your highness.”

And there he had been, just a line or two of the conversation ago, dithering and clamming up uselessly over honesty and new friendships and teasing and lines that shouldn’t and couldn’t be crossed- thirty minutes of washing crockery and breakable plates in silence, thirty minutes of songs floating up from the radio, and the humour uncurled as unconsciously, as naturally from his tongue as if it had been one of his oldest friends. Darn. He didn’t behave towards most of his blood kin that way. They all got the Albus such-a-sweet-polite-boy Potter. This was moving faster than a freight train.

‘Get along like a house on fire,’ Hugo would say, nodding his head like the most knowledgeable drunk in the entire world, and then hastening to add- ‘What’s so friendly about a house on fire anyway?’

‘How’m I s’posed to know?’

‘You’re the author, aren’t you, bozo? Isn’t this...what’ya call’t...hyperbole or summat...’

The distant memory made his lip curve, almost unconsciously, the response radically opposite from the reaction that remembrances of his family generally provoked. Before the realisation could properly register and sting him, Athena had already moved on to smirking at him over the ice sculpture comment; and he winced slightly in place, wishing she’d skim over that already, not linger too much. Schoolday perceptions were rather naive of course, influenced by the company you kept and the exclusively patented Hogwarts mentalities that compelled everyone to classify everyone else into nice little, labeled boxes. Here’s a large one for the members of the House of the Brave, here’s a neat one for the Blue and Bronzed Brains, here a leftover one for the inglorious ‘Puffs, here a stinking shack for the filthy Slyther’sins’. The creamy milk went gushing right in, stirred in laboriously. Albus watched the thin, steel handle of the spoon execute perfect rounds in the liquid, creating brown ripples flecked with golden beige froth, mind blank and drawn into the monotonous swirls of the liquid, shields unshuttered.

“Didn’t we all, though.” Round and round. Round and round. He knew cooking was nothing like Potions, yet the spoon still executed precise clockwise stirs, creating a new hollow in the centre of the brown everytime before the ripples could settle. “The outer image was all that mattered, how well one could keep up a sham.” He glanced up at her, hand drawing forward to prise the second mug out of her grasp, the give-and-take still reflecting faintly in his eyes, now with shifting shadows tossing and playing hide-and-seek with the constantly shifting light of afternoon into night. “I was always more water than ice anyway.”

But then a shoulder bumped against his, as if passing the good will on, and his eyes coloured up again, lifting his chin enough to glimpse the tail-end of a smirk, the slight flattening of the lips and an aristrocratic upward curl of pink with white peeking just beneath; a sight its easy to imagine he’d see every morning over the breakfast table for a large, indistinguishable number of the coming days. The sight, and the thought, makes it curiously easier to speak again, brow arching slightly.“ ‘Our dungeons’? I resent that.” , A second spoon was retrieved, ladling sugar from what used to be a biscuit tin, tiny white cubes sinking through the foam. “It was strangely easy, actually. No one had any expectations of you. No one sulking at you not waiting for them after class, or nagging at you for homework assignments, or disappointed for forgetting their birthdays or not visiting them in the Hospital Wing. It was......liberating.”

His eyes flit above the rim of the coffee mug and fixate on the wall, his mind unfurling its wings to stretch beyond, not really within the walls of their home any longer. It flies and flies, wings skimming across the white-tipped crests of the waves of the Black Lake that shines green outside the windows of the Slytherin common room, ducking through the stone cold, comforting, labyrinthe passageways of the dungeons, staring at the familiar, carved ceiling of his old, wooden four-poster bed. “I was one of the few of our generation who truly wanted to be there, you know. Almost fated for the Eagle, the Sorting Hat was conflicted.......but I insisted on the Snake.” And that last line would make no sense to Athena, not the woman who occupied his rooms but knew precious little of him, about a tenth of what he knew of her- and somehow information was so much harder to give than a roof and breakfast. But she’d mentioned his father twice already, and he would not bear a third time.

“At the age of ten,” He said, stare peeling layers off layers of the walls if he’d actually been watching them. “I loved my father like one would love the protagonist of a much-loved story. He was nothing more to me- never had been.” Lies......but what of it. He wasn’t aware of the lie himself, and so on basis of sheer technicality, was speaking the absolute truth. “At thirteen, I was contemptuous towards anyone who mentioned his name, and all the books printed in his honour- because surely he couldn’t have been that noble, that perfect, that inhuman. Surely they weren’t expecting me to stand up to an impossible ideal.”

The stirring was done, and he pressed the mug into her palms, fingers folding around her own, stare unerringly calm, equable. “At sixteen, I felt glad that he was dead and would have been happy to do the deed myself.”

His thumb settled against the smooth bottom of the mug, turned sticky by seeping sugared caffeine. His chapped lip burned from the overhot sting of coffee. “So no. I never quite adored him.”

And I lost. A lot.

But that was ancient. Almost like legend, to be stowed away in the deepest recesses of your memory, never to be retrieved and relived except when the cause demanded it. Nothing really summoned up that build up of black at the end of your wand, that throbbing resonating through the wood, almost as if it would splinter and embed into your very skin, the cut and flash of Dark magic; like old memories. Scabbed over memories. Never quite healed.

Right now, wasn’t the time. Not when that little line appeared over Athena’s brow, furrowed in something almost like worry- except it was ‘thought’ and ‘contemplation’ of course, never worry- nothing so plebeian could ever be acknowledged to touch a Goyle. It would be easy, too easy to offer reassurances, to even pat her on the shoulder or smooth a thumb up her knuckle and spout the false hollowness of ‘everything will be alright’. No money, who cares. No family, no degree, no house, no security.....but everything had to be alright. Tosh.

Perhaps it was her gratitude, more than her anxiety which shattered his silence. His jaw worked, lips opening and falling shut for several seconds before sound could grace them. It came out uncensored, he wasn’t thinking- he never was really, when it came to helping her, “I wanted to do English. In a Muggle university. It seemed so much more......more, than Healing or Auroring or Curse-Breakership or whatever.” The air hissed out through his teeth, now came the unthinking part. “You don’t strictly need a gradesheet from a Muggle school....a slight Befuddling Charm is enough to confuse them in all the population. There’s Philosophy, History, Classics, Fashion, Languages, Archaeology, research......” And then his mouth stopped, because there was only so much of Potter non-thinking he could do at one stretch.

It sounded ideal in theory. No degree from a Wizarding institute, so get one from a Muggle one. Many establishments in the Wizarding world accepted that anyway....considering the lack of proper training in certain fields in their society. The current editor of Witch Weekly was a Muggleborn graduate holding a very much Muggle degree. Take a degree, get a job worth your talents.......But Athena was an erstwhile Rookwood, now Goyle. She probably hadn’t seen the Underground, or stepped in a departmental store in her life. It wasn’t a question of if she’d say no. It was a question of how vehement she’d be, and whether that would involve contemptuously spat insults of various degrees.

The cynic in Albus lamented at the fact that he didn’t quite completely believe in the above.

All children harboured an undue amount of hate for their parents. All children thought the most grotesque of things, wondered after what would happen if this one was omitted from the picture, whether it would be better with dad without mum or vice versa. All children considered it. Few allowed it to be spoken, allowed it to escape from the cavities of their minds, and few acted upon it. Herein, Albus Severus Potter and Athena Marianne Goyle served to articulate the exceptions to this duplicitous rule. For he said it aloud, she acted upon it and thus there was a strange aptness to their being there in the same house, nursing the same coffee to their mouths in well-handled mugs each seemingly wondering privately whether their lives had been rightly conducted or whether the subsequent events post-Hogwarts was an attempt to repair what they had allowed to decay so easily. She couldn’t answer that. She doubted he would be able to, either. It was a Slytherin thing, she supposed.

For all of her vitriol, for all of her guilt, it still stilled her to hear the words she had knew would come but still hadn’t honestly been expecting. At sixteen, he was glad. He was glad that the great and benevolent Harry Potter was dead, that if he hadn’t been, he’d have been happy to do it. At twenty-one, it wasn’t so much of a leap to say that nothing had changed. They hadn’t. Yet, at the same time when she looked at Albus now he was a man and the idea that at sixteen, while still a boy, he was capable of such hate… it hurt. It did hurt. Even though she herself kept close at hand her own little hatreds she had the inability to see herself then as a girl for nothing she thought had changed in her. She still belittled herself, considered herself that girl even if she could not properly measure that she was. Albus had been a boy. It seemed so ridiculous that he could have hated his father, yet so easy, she supposed. If it had been easy for her to hate her step-mother and in part, indeed, her father then why was it so different that Albus could hate his father? Well, simple, because his father was Harry Potter. Hers was Gregory Goyle. Everything was different about those two men.

Athena curled her fingers around her coffee, her fingernail running its way across the lip of the mug. She pursed her own lips, her brows furrowing, a great shadow crossing her face as she filed away her thoughts, stored them back into the little burrows that her uncles had taught her to make in her mind. Keep your thoughts behind brick walls, behind brick walls, locked in safes behind bookshelves, beneath concrete floors guarded by ravenous wolves and a maze of second guesses, they had said. Let no one find what you really think. Cian and Ophion were particularly good at lying, Diomedes was particularly concerned with family secrets. For the longest time she was the only girl, the only little jewel in the Goyle diadem. They had endeared themselves to her, treated her as their own. Taken her this way and that, to every show, to every party, on every holiday they wanted to go on. They had taught her. Loved her. Yet, when things had begun to fall apart, they’d abandoned her and even when her roller coaster began to turn upwards again, they hadn’t deigned to take her back. Of that, she was somewhat wryly glad. But she’d kept their lessons. She kept her thoughts to herself yet, somehow, they were beginning to leak through, like holes had been punched in the bottom of her boat.

Blue eyes lifted from the swirling black depths encircled in ceramic. The azure curves flicked to Albus, taking in the verdant mirrors that looked back, somewhat dormant, sometimes helpless but always kind – to her, at least. She brought her teeth around her lower lip and tugged it into her mouth. She ran her tongue underneath it and her eyes fell again as she lifted her cup to her mouth, absorbing the bitterness of the hot drink. She sighed a little, bringing the cup back down to the surface with a small click of the ceramic bumping onto the wood. She curled and unfurled her index finger idly around the handle and she shook her head, embarrassment enflaming its way across her skin, porcelain itself scalding with a sudden flash of colour. She was winter with her icy skin, peppered intermittently with dark freckles and around her she was framed with long, mahogany tresses and only her eyes served to betray some colour in her but even that was cold and unrelentingly stoic. She was not a woman who belonged anywhere other than in the life she was supposed to have made for herself. Unfeelingly integrated within the society she belonged to – getting her small revenges by charging her expenses to her husband, getting her greater pleasures from a multitude of lovers. Yet, here she was, beginning to be enveloped into a world where colour seemed to stretch exponentially over the good. Where passion was no fault and where wanting something that was different, experimental, was not wrong and seen to be a threat to the very foundations upon which they all lived it was the foundations upon which they lived because this was the light, and right, side of the argument. The right and light side of wizardry.

“I…n-no,” she turned her head away, trying to find a spot of wall she could look at, that would help her compose herself. “I couldn’t, I’m not… I wouldn’t even know anything about…I don’t belong in that world.”

In what world do you belong, then? Really, Athena. Where, then, if not the one you’ve just come from, if not properly the one you have just entered – if not a world where you could be learned, where you could stand a chance to do better, to have better and could create something for your children? If not there then nowhere. Nowhere else would have you.

Athena took a sip of her coffee, shame fully taking form on her cheeks, emblazoned there as though she had been smacked from pillar to post. But she hadn’t been. She felt guilt most of all because it was the most viable option of all. She had heard a handful of Ravenclaws talking about it once and she did not know why she remembered but she did. All she needed was her O.W.Ls – enviable scores, they were. They’d all had great hope for her N.E.W.T marks. That hadn’t happened but the former was all they had said would be needed. Then she could do anything, just as Albus had said. It was possible. She could do it. Yet, she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to based on the fact that it would be Muggles there learning with her – she wasn’t that girl anymore – but it was that she felt inadequate. She wasn’t the one that deserved to live a higher, more esteemed life. She was nothing. Entitlement was lost because she had nothing and she couldn’t get anything in the Wizarding world because of who she was, because of the files that sat in the Ministry, because of the ink in her skin. She couldn’t be anything, get anything, and get a life in the Muggle world because she knew nothing about them. She had nothing in common with them. She’d be scorned, she feared. She’d be hated. Ostracised for her own ignorance.

“I wouldn’t even…” she began again, “I don’t know anything about Muggles.” She bit her lip.

And yet she knew to hate them. Since she’d been able to walk, talk, sit, stand, eat and dress she’d known that she was above Muggles. She’d known that they weren’t worth her time, that she was better. Yet, at the same time, she knew nothing about them. She’d seen glimpses. There had been Half-Bloods in her dormitory at Hogwarts after all. Yet, she couldn’t pretend to even begin to understand their world. Somehow, though, she was encamped with a Potter who knew Muggles as well as any other normal wizard, one that had respect for others. He sat there and he suggested she live amongst them to gain some sort of autonomy of her own as though it was simple, knowing at the same time that it was impractical, she was sure. She couldn’t be trusted amongst Muggles, surely. It was like bringing a fox into the hen house, wasn’t it? Yet, wasn’t she more of the hen now than she had ever been? She was the one quaking in her boots, not the other way around. She wasn’t a Death Eater. She wasn’t really the Pureblood princess she’d always told herself she was, always been told she was. She was a woman on her last legs, running out of options, cornered by one she was terrified of and penned in by a reality she didn’t want to go back to but would always be an avenue she could pursue. She didn’t have any more choices. She had to do it or she’d be forever at someone else’s mercy.

“Say,” she released her lip. “Say I wanted to. Hypothetically speaking, that is.” She continued to fiddle with the cup handle. “How would I… like, I don’t know, do…it and how would I even balance work and the children and everything else it can’t…it can’t be done.”

It wasn’t an impossibility, really. She could make time. Time would be found for it. Plus, she was a witch after all and would be much more efficient than her counterparts. She could use what she knew about magic to help her. She had a habit of forgetting that sometimes. She could be quicker, more systematic about things. Yet, somehow she’d have to juggle it all and she was struggling as it was, she couldn’t imagine trying to study again with the attention tugging her in all directions. She had a feeling she’d split and everyone would get a bit and she’d be left with nothing. She didn’t want that. So while it was an idea, she didn’t believe it to be possible in a million years. It couldn’t be done.

Distantly, a clock chimed somewhere. Athena looked down at her coffee, reminding herself she was still where she was meant to be. She was in a kind of home, imagining a kind of future that really wasn’t so out of her reach as she liked to think. Kind of.

Expectations are a fickle thing. He didn’t know what he had been expecting of them. He didn’t whether he’d even been expecting them to exist or not. But one thing he did know, of these strange, hypothetical expectations........that they didn’t involve this. They involved a gasp perhaps, the utter surprise that must come with knowing that the Potter love wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, that someone bearing that last name could even contemplate something remotely negative, forget bitter, against one of their own. Maybe a dark, censoring look, full of judgment, full of contempt at the sheer ungratefulness on the part of the son of one of the greatest wizards the world had ever known. Maybe a concerned question, a patronising stare one might cast at a petulant child, followed a monologue littered with preachy words attempting to ‘make him understand’ how mistaken and wrong he was. Maybe even a tirade on his behalf on how war heroes were such shams, a spectacle that demonstrated how completely ‘on his side’ the person was.

The expectations involved nothing of this. This silent, companionable sipping of coffee. The quiet that demonstrated no judgments. No opinions. And the greatest thing of all......that if she had any opinions, she did not care to- or rather, cared enough not to project any of them. The last time he had revealed something of this nature about himself to someone else.......Jack had accepted it. Presented her own view, they had lapsed into an almost debate, because bloody hell that was what they did- but had cleanly accepted it.

Athena......f*ck, she said nothing but......his perceptions would be fooling him, but she seemed to understand.

Albus leaned his spine into the tile-topped counter, inhaling the spirals of steam wafting up from his cup, and let the now monotonous static of the radio wash into his ears.

And in that gap, that undisturbed quiet that reigned in the period between a woman hesitating over whether her views had been wrong all this while, and a man reveling in the understanding, the liberation of his; the cloudy, half-realised fantasies of his childhood rose to mind, shaking off the dust, yawning and uncurling and rising into the open- to be remembered after what seemed like decades.

Albus had been a small, impressionable boy when he had first begun devouring the writings sprung from the pen of Muggles. He gazed at the little, calligraphic words in fascination, tracing his finger over the looping curls of the letters and the inked in pictures embroidering Muggle fairytales with nothing but open-eyed wonder. Children, always, in a way that seems to be half-miraculous, have this odd way of gazing past everything important that holds the eyes of adults, looking beyond- and Albus had done the same, seeing through the pretty words that spoke of fairies and magic and good versus evil wars and happy endings and sensing longing. A deep, inexhaustible ache that resonated through the heart of the Muggle writer and flowed out through his pen, an extended, grasping hand trying to take hold of that which always seemed impossible, out of reach. And Albus, a boy born in the cradle of stories and wizardry that were all true, could not understand.

Until he grew up a little bit more, and sank into Wilde and Elliot and Austen and Dickens- rogue and romeo and everyone else in between. Industrial barons in the Regency times, modern day film directors, young nameless boys that worked in cyber cafes, professors that deserted the dryness of theory and practical teaching about the soul and romance and philosophy- all seemed to call to him so much more strongly than the magical castle in Scotland where his destiny lied. Perhaps it was the finest form of irony, how the Muggles longed to inhabit and be a part of a world where portraits moved and goblets sang and concoctions could make you turn pink and purple around the ears, and people lived and died by the swish and flick of a stick. And he, Albus Severus Potter, all three names a prodigious reminder of how very much a part of this world he was, and how he couldn’t hope to escape it, however he tried. He a spell crafter, he a Potion brewer, the two vocations that reveled in the glory of magic- and he also the young, ten year old boy that had gotten lost on a trip to the London Eye one day, and had absently wished never to be found. Who might, might, he could never be sure, be almost as happy studying literature as he had been giving life to impossibilities by a wand movement and a Latin word.

Perhaps, what had truly drawn him to the Muggle word was the promise of anonymity. Of having a clean slate, of no one knowing who he was, of being glared at because of the deeds he did, not the deeds he did as a Potter. Because he hated anonymity. Because he could rise from no one knowing who he was to everyone knowing him, for him.

And he waited, even if Athena’s hands were compulsively fisting and releasing, throat working beneath her jaw, lip chewed raw beneath her teeth, skin blazing as if she were committing blasphemy in even considering the thought, even for a moment. For she wanted it too. She wanted it too.

”But I’m sat here at this table and I feel happier than I have felt in nearly three years. Because I’ve got the children and for some inexplicable reason at this moment I have you and it’s the best feeling…”

“.....How would I… like, I don’t know, do…it and how would I even balance work and the children and everything else it can’t…it can’t be done.”

“You said it yourself.” He wasn’t tactile. Not in the least. He couldn’t initiate contact, press lips so carelessly to the jaw like she did not so long ago, to soothe. He couldn’t lay his fingers on her shoulder, turn her around slowly that she would know all of it wasn’t something to be embarassed of. Couldn’t smooth down the quivers in her hands, stroke a thumb fleetingly over her palm, her pulse point, lay a cool hand against her flaming cheeks, cradle her face to look reassuringly into her eyes. But he could speak, and he could look at the little curl twisting behind her ear without shading a thought, if she ever decided to look back. And for a moment, it would have to be enough. “You have me.”

“I have lived among Muggles before. It isn’t hard........just different.” He set the empty coffee mug down on the counter with a quiet clink, the brown liquid having burned its way past his oesophagus a long time ago. That still didn’t explain the faint whooshing sound in his ears, or why it felt like he was starting a second Rebellion. The same slow, roiling anticipation for something still inexplicable, still unknown. “We could....get your books. Its common for students in Muggle courses to work part time. The kids would be safe here, I could get it warded and as for your volunteering at the Institute....” He cleared his throat. It was difficult to get the words out, that was admitted. It was also inevitable. “If your schedule doesn’t cooperate. If the need arises......I...I don’t exactly have fixed work hours.” His throat pushed past the invisible obstruction again. “I could help.”

But it was imperative that she shouldn’t get it wrong, again bring forth words like ‘gratitude’ and ‘owe you’ and ‘pay you back’. So he hastened to add, voice settling into calm, unstudied, premeditatedly casual. “I mean...I had to anyway. Got the letter a long time back. Just needed the excuse.”